this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2025
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You see a 1 minute clip right before they die. You have their real names (and any aliases), but that's all the info you have. You don't know their exact location, not even the country, nor their occupation, or whether they are a "good" or "bad" person. Their death is 99% guaranteed to happen unless you help them avert their death.

They will always be located at least 1/3 of the Earth's circumference away from you, so it means they will be guaranteed to not be within 13,333KM of your location at the moment you get the premonition.

What do you do with this knowledge? Try to save them? Or feel the guilt of their death forever, that you might've been able to prevent?

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[–] megane_kun@lemm.ee 7 points 6 days ago

Okay, so that's like two-thirds of the earth's surface (centered at the antipodal point), and it's a random person. It's almost certain that I don't know this person (aside from the info just given to me), and that the easiest way I can help save them in 24 hours is to warn them online.

First off, how can I be sure that those premonitions are real? They're of a random person that may or may not have an obiturary available to me after they've died. Worse, these obituaries might get published days after the death. Making sure that I'm not going crazy (or being driven crazy by those) would be pretty hard.

Listing the deaths (never in a computer, at least at this early stage) with all the details available to me would be a good start. The following details would be the most helpful:

  • real name of the person
  • the time of premonition
  • date of the printed obituary (or the date of the newspaper where the obituary is printed on)

If there's enough data to convince me that it is indeed real, and be able to tease out the rules of this power, I can start saving people.

First off, I'll filter those forseen deaths. for those judged "bad", I'll keep the info to myself. I am assuming that part of this judgement is my morals, so I do have a hand in the deaths I fail to prevent, whether or not they're judged "good" or "bad". At any rate, this would likely be instantaneous, and would happen as I record the premonition and its details.

Second, I'll create a website, a very secure one for obvious reasons, with effort done to isolate myself (any information that can lead to me) from this website. In this website, there'd be a page listing all the premonitions I decided would be published. Marked as "impending" (or something equally ominous) would be the premonitions I witnessed within the past 24 hours. Another page would list all of those ones (and where people could be alerted). Heck, maybe I can establish an RSS feed for this.

I guess, it'd be like techno Death Note, but I have zero control over the details.

Of course, that'd not be a very effective way of getting the information out. Relatives and friends of those people listed might even suspect the page has something to do with the deaths. I'd expect law enforcement to be on to me, tracing me via the hosting services, the ISP, etc. that I use to publish the website. And in the event they do get to me, and if I'm afforded any trial, people might not even believe what I tell them (even if I tell the entire truth).

If I do nothing, none of that will come to pass, but I'd be racked by guilt over the "good" deaths I am not able to prevent. On the other hand, even just getting that information out, even if no one ever benefits from it, is already putting myself and those around me at danger.

Personally? I don't have the skills to create that website, let alone do it in such a way that it isolates me well enough to at least not get me arrested within a week of the site operating.